Josh Raiford gets a little wet himself while keeping his dog Abby dry on St. Simons Island.

The St. Marys River was rising in the Georgia Bend at the Florida line Tuesday and could threaten homes if the rain continues. Even on higher ground, rural roads throughout Southeast Georgia are under water or washed out, officials said.

“The river is running. It’s running hard,’’ Charlton County Emergency Management Director Bruce Young said of the St. Marys.

During extremely wet periods the St. Marys has gotten out of its banks, flooded homes and caused evacuations in the Georgia Bend. Young said it’s too early to say if that will happen again, but he nonetheless stayed in the area until 2 a.m. Tuesday watching the river.

But conditions are so bad on county roads that the County Commission declared a local state of emergency at noon, Young said.

Flood waters in Folkston washed away some of the asphalt in a southbound lane of U.S. 1 and the Folkston Police Department closed it, Young said.

Charlton is just one of the counties with impassable roads and the number is growing, officials said.

With its more than 400 miles of dirt road, Brantley County is getting hit especially hard, County Manager Parrish Barwick said.

A couple of homes down one county road in the Waynesville community were isolated by a washout, but the residents had the foresight to leave before they were trapped, he said.

“Our roads already are so saturated that people aren’t even trying to get up and down them,’’ he said.

Alicia Jacobs and her family battled flooding at their home off Buster Harvey Road as water flowed along the roadway and then detoured across their property.

“Yesterday, it floated the trash can away,’’ and water was on the top step of their mobile home, she said.

Her sons cranked up a pump to get some of the water moving out of her yard although it was still raining.

The Jacobs family was not the only ones with trouble. Many of Brantley County’s roads had water standing in them or had water flowing across them.

There have been no flash floods, but the rain has fallen steadily with just a few breaks over the past few days, Barwick said.

And it’s not like the county can rush in and make repairs because the heavy equipment can damage the roads worse than passenger vehicles, Barwick said.

“Instead of helping something, we’re creating more of a problem,’’ he said.

Barwick said roads were being damaged all over the county as the ditches are filled with flowing water that steadily cuts into the roadbeds from the sides.

“It’s turning some roads into one-lane pig trails,’’ he said.

Camden County Emergency Management Director Mark Crews said a number of streets are flooded there, but that it was relatively typical for such heavy rain.

“It’s normal flooding. We don’t have anybody out of their homes,’’ he said.

Like Young, he was watching the St. Marys River because the flood waters will eventually reach Camden County.

In Florida, Gov. Rick Scott declared a statewide emergency as the storm continues to saunter through the state.

Throughout the First Coast Tuesday, neighborhoods flooded and officials closed roadways — including a section of Interstate 10 in Baker and Columbia counties. As daylight faded, cars in Jacksonville stalled in deep water along Roosevelt Boulevard near Edgewood Avenue. The city also closed streets in the flood-prone San Marco and Riverside neighborhoods on the banks of the St. Johns River.

“Even though the winds are coming down, the rain threat continues,” said James Franklin at the National Hurricane Center. “We expect another 4 to 8 inches in some of these areas up in North Florida in particular.”

The storm also could spawn tornadoes.

In Jacksonville early Tuesday, Interstate 95 was littered with vehicles that had run off the road due to standing water and hydroplaning, with one landing in a drainage pond at the interchange with Interstate 295 near Mandarin. The city closed sections of at least 60 roads throughout the day.